


The Great British Bun Fail

by abbichicken



Category: Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Baking, Brandy - Freeform, Cooking, Drinking, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Stupidity, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat, buns, gbbo - Freeform, irresponsible behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody goes home until Paul's buns rise appropriately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great British Bun Fail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [take_liberties](https://archiveofourown.org/users/take_liberties/gifts).



> Just a quick one for you, dear recipient...I loved your letter and wish I'd seen it earlier! Hope you like it! Also, I know they don't film anywhere near Christmas, but...eh...let's pretend it makes sense?!

"Honestly Paul, nobody's going to be able to tell. It's only a very brief shot." Sue covered her face with her hands, hoping that when she removed them, the scene in front of her would have changed from angry!Paul Hollywood ranting about the new ovens to one of quiet, bun-based bliss shortly followed by the announcement that everyone could go home.

"No! No, everyone needs to stay and see exactly how ridiculous this is. You can't call this technological progress; it's hugely inefficient. How on earth am I supposed to critique our amateurs appropriately when even I can't get these bloody things to respond? Let's get the old ones back. Now. Right now."

"I really don't think it's that bad..." Mel offered, trying hard to diffuse, or, indeed, end the situation by eating the 'failed' buns as fast as humanly possible, before somebody noticed and tried to curb her sugar intake again.

A production assistant attempted to intervene, to repeat the much-said line about how they couldn't use the old ovens because they didn't conform to x and y with the latest energy saving standards and the viewers would _know_ about that sort of thing and complain in their multitudes, but Mary distracted him by pressing a neatly folded, used cupcake case into his hands and issued a "Could you just find a bin to pop that into for me? Thank you ever so much..." and the producer, flushed at being so called upon, left without a word to do just that.

"There must be a problem with the circulation of the air in here..." Paul raged, at nothing in particular, grabbing a shelf out of the oven and frowning at it, before swearing rather brutally and dropping it on the floor when it dawned on him, via the medium of pain, that it was really sodding hot..

"Won't somebody think of Mary!" Mel exclaimed, dramatically putting the back of her hand to her forehead in mock horror.  
"Oh, don't mind me..." Mary said, folding her arms and leaning back a touch on the counter, looking for all the world like she could watch this all day. "Just remember, Paul, whatever you're feeling will come out in the bake..."

"Stuff and nonsense!" Paul muttered under his breath, wrestling a new batch of dough into twelve evenly-shaped balls, rolling two at a time on the lightly-floured work surface with a fearful mix of precision and frustration, each hand working in separate, synchronised motion, until the tray in front of him is replete with the fourth batch.

"Now," says Paul, to a camera that was switched off a very long time ago now, "I'm just going to slice the tops just so, and what that does is that creates the classic pattern on the top where..."

"How about leaving them as they are?" Mary suggests, with a little twinkle in her eye. "After all, there's a certain technical merit in simply baking your buns smoothly and evenly just as they are, isn't there?"

Mel opens her mouth to offer up the inevitable double entendre, but it's been going on for so much time now that she's rather run out of them, and that, that's a sorry state of affairs indeed.

"That's not how they're meant to look!" Paul says, with a petulance that's edging upon broken.

"Honestly Paul, I don't think many of our viewers will know that you're attempting to replicate the traditional Luxembourgian sweet buns," Mary continues. "Sometimes it's best just to keep it simple, don't you think?"

"One will know. One of them will bloody know, and they'll write in to Graham bloody Norton and then next time I'm on they'll read it out and it'll be all, see, Paul, you don't know everything about baking, and then they'll bring out that clip of that woman with the cake pops again and oh..."

"Brandy, anyone?" Mel asks, rummaging in one of the cupboards.

"Ooo, me!" Sue demands, and Mary raises a hand as well.

Mel pours four shot glasses and hands one to Paul, who's simply standing over his buns, shaking his head sadly. "Here you go," she says. "I'm sure these ones will turn out just right!" She uses the gentle tones one might employ for a disgruntled child. "Just think of that Waitrose advert with the girl and the gingerbread and the..."

Paul looks at her with the withering look of a man who definitely, definitely doesn't want to be compared to the girl in the Waitrose advert.

"...but it's lovely, in the end, everyone's so pleased and she sells out of her biscuits and then she gives her last one..."

Paul can't contain it any longer. "The bake is too long on that final batch and the icing is haphazard at best - it's no example to set, especially at Christmas time, when the standards should be high! I appreciate that she's trying but..."

"I can't, I can't listen to you berating the poor fictional advertising concept with the magnificent pixie cut for her soggy bottom!" Sue bursts out, draining the brandy and sliding off the counter she's been perched upon to take a defiant stand against this continuous nonsense.

"I didn't say it was a soggy bottom, you have to do something terribly wrong to get a soggy bottom on a gingerb-"

"ENOUGH!" roars Sue, and even Paul is silenced into no more than a raised eyebrow. "Now. Get those buns in the oven, unsliced, because right now nobody cares and if you can't make them not lopsided then nobody else can either, and if they do, then you'll be even more upset, and can't we just do a Victoria sponge again anyway? No! I don't want to hear about that now. Mary, either stop looking so smug all the time or turn around and face the wall - you're winding him up on purpose now, don't pretend you're not..."

Mary obediently rotated 180 degrees to admire the tent flaps, sipping merrily at her brandy as she did so. She did enjoy it when Paul got all purple of face and foul of mouth with the baking, if only because he was so nauseatingly in control the other 99% of the time.

"...Sue, you fill up this glass right this moment, and for goodness' sake, break out the cheese, because we're going to need to balance out all this buntastic consumption. I'll have a Stilton, if you don't mind. Mary, will you have some Brie?"

"I've always got time for a little Brie," Mary replies, still facing away because she's laughing, now, and that would likely wind Paul up even more.

Mel continues, "Paul, get those buns in the oven immediately, set a timer like a normal person and stop relying on the change in the wind or whatever it is that you do, and come and have a drink. It's nearly Christmas, and you're being a terrible grinch."

"I-" Paul protests, eyeing the buns that are, even now, he's certain, overproving themselves in the heat of the tent.

"Grinch!" Sue chimes in, holding up a finger. "Oven!" she orders, pointing.

Paul bites his lip and, for once, does as he's told.

"They'll be ruined anyway, and without the slits they're really not..."

"That's enough! No more about buns! Now. To the brandy!"

An hour later, the fire alarm sounds, and the production assistant scurries back, spluttering, because that's not how things usually go in the tent when the contestants are absent, and they're all very tired and concerned about Paul threatening to walk out altogether over this oven business, only to find both judges and hosts sat around the table in fits of giggles, Mary doing a dance that could really pass as the robot to the beep of the fire alarm as Paul, red-faced and with a suspiciously empty bottle of cooking brandy in front of him appears to be trying to sing along. Mel starts to beat-box, and Sue adds some interpretive clapping sounds.

An empty Brie wrapper tumbles forlornly across the ground, and there are crumbs everywhere.  
One of the runners follows the assistant in, and is, too, halted, transfixed by the scene.

"Should we..."

"I think Paul's burnt his buns again."

"Should we just go? Leave them to it?"

"I think that's an excellent idea..."


End file.
